Sometimes you just need a poetry break! You know what to do. Yours, theirs, mine, ours.

This one struck me today.

Starfish

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman down beside you at the counter who says, Last night, the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to thepond, where whole generations of biological processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reedsspeak to you of the natural world: they whisper,they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?There is movement beneath the water, but it may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the years you ran around, the years you developeda shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you aregenuinely surprised to find how quiet you havebecome. And then life lets you go home to thinkabout all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the onewho never had any conditions, the one who waitedyou out. This is life’s way of letting you know thatyou are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you were born at a good time. Because you were able to listen when people spoke to you. Because youstopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for yourlate night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland, while outside, the starfish drift through the channel, with smiles on their starry faces as they headout to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

Running along a bank, a parapet That saves from the precipitous wood below The level road, there is a path. It serves Children for looking down the long smooth steep, Between the legs of beech and yew, to where A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women Content themselves with the road and what they see Over the bank, and what the children tell. The path, winding like silver, trickles on, Bordered and even invaded by thinnest moss That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain. The children wear it. They have flattened the bank On top, and silvered it between the moss With the current of their feet, year after year. But the road is houseless, and leads not to school. To see a child is rare there, and the eye Has but the road, the wood that overhangs And underyawns it, and the path that looks As if it led on to some legendary Or fancied place where men have wished to go And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirthOf sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred thingsYou have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swungHigh in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring thereI've chased the shouting wind along, and flungMy eager craft through footless halls of air...Up, up the long, delirious, burning blueI've topped the wind-swept heights with easy graceWhere never lark or even eagle flew --And, while with silent lifting mind I've trodThe high untrespassed sanctity of space,Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

I chose this for my brothers funeral last Thursday. I think it's quite popular but I'd never seen or heard it before.

Remember Me:To the living, I am gone.To the sorrowful, I will never return.To the angry, I was cheated,But to the happy, I am at peace,And to the faithful, I have never left.I cannot be seen, but I can be heard.So as you stand upon a shore, gazing at a beautiful sea - remember me.As you look in awe at a mighty forest and its grand majesty - remember me.As you look upon a flower and admire its simplicity - remember me.Remember me in your heart, your thoughts, your memories of the times we loved,the times we cried, the times we fought, the times we laughed.For if you always think of me, I will never be gone.

We had to throw thingsaway to sell our house, make it seem like we livedsparingly—a minimalist life. As if anyone liveswith only one blue shirt in the closet,one pair of shoes illuminated by a single light bulb swinging—40 watts and a string to pull, frayed twine and a soundlessplastic bell, to turn it on, to turn it off.

For years, I watched ivy spread over my neighbor’s house.Each year the leaves turned from green to redto gone. When the leavesfell, flocks of nevermigrating starlings ate the purple berries, tugged off the stems.

For years, from my kitchen window,I watched Siberian snow geese winter along the Columbia river. Each day they’d rise like heavy rain clouds blown by wind—white plumage like morning sky, black wings like shadows, like rain. Sometimes, so early, the sky still the color of ashy smoke, thousands of geese would disappear into a whorl of sudden snow.In these moments, I’d imagine,though I never saw anythinglike it, the spray of twelve gauge buckshot entering the body of a goose in mid-air, and its mate, its mate for life, would honk, drop down, honk, follow the limp body to the ground.And because this is a love story,the falling goose,the following goose,the strange replaying of this scene,the replaying of something that did not happen,never disturbed me,the way it does now,as I stand in my new house,in my new closetwith no string to pull.Instead a switch, like all the othermodern rooms, easier I suppose,to turn the light on, to turn it off. And strangely, with no geeseat my new kitchen window,I have traded scenes: the repeated fallinggoose for the last momentin my old closet. Standing in the dark,even my blue shirt gone,I pull the string a final time.I turn the light on to dust in the corner, turn it off to the empty dark,thinking, how the severity of nothing can fill up a room.And because I cannot resistI turn it on and turn it offagain and again, like I did when I was five, maybe four, when the simplicity of light and dark was enoughto stay an afternoon.

An earlier poem from the unstoppable Dean Young, written in one of his nine lives.

I Am But a Traveler in This Land & Know Little of Its Ways

BY DEAN YOUNG

Is everything a field of energy causedby human projection? From the crib barshang the teething tools. Above the finger-drummed desk, a bit lip. The cyclone fence of buts

surrounds the soccer field of what if.Sometimes it seems like a world where no one knows what he or she is doing, eight lanes both directions. How about a polymer

that contracts in response to electricalcharge? A swimming pool on the 18th floor? King Lear done by sock puppets? Anyonewho has traveled here knows the discrepancies

between idea and fact. The idea is the worm in the tequila and the next day is the fact. In between may be the sacred—real blood from the wooden virgin’s eyes, and the hoax—

landing sites in cornfields. Maybe ideasare best sprung from actions like the children of Zeus. One gives us elastic and the omelette, another nightmares and SUVs. There’s considerable

wobble in the system, and the fan belt screams, waking the baby. Swaying in the darkened nursery, kissing the baby-smelling head: good idea! But also sadness looking at the sea.

The stranded whale, guided out of the cove by tugboats, turns and swims back in. The violinist will not let go her violin which is 200 years old and still on the train

thus she is dragged down the track. By whatmanner is the soul joined to the body? Answer: an arm connecting a violinto a violinist. According to Freud,

there are no accidents. Astrologistsand Presbyterians agree for different reasons. You fall down the stairs with a birthday cake. You try to fit a blunderbuss into a laptop.

Human consciousness: is it the projectoror the screen? They come in orange jumpsuits and spray the grass so everything diesbut the grass. It is too late to ask Kafka

what he thinks. Sometimes they give you a box of ash, a handshake, and the rest is your problem. In one version,the beggar turns out to be a king and grants

the poor couple a castle and a moat and two silver horses said to be sired by the wind.That was before dentistry, which might have been a better gift. You did not want to get sick in the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th or 18th centuries.

So too the 19th and 20th were to be avoidedbut the doctor coming to bleed you is the master of the short story. After the kiss from whom he will never know, the lieutenant, going home,

Sunlight and breeze and a fullness of sensesWarmth of outdoor smellsFear of what will happen, what already hasWhat sets it off I cannot tellDust it away, scent of lemonCleans everything but those stainsDoors are open, beckoningSo easy to run awayBut I'll stay and listen to the radioAnd the sweetest voice I knowShe soothes me and she comforts meA warm blanket around my soulAnd it all goes away in the blink of an eyeCarried off with my tearsEvery sha la la la, every whoa oh ohMelts the pain after all these years

I chose this for my brothers funeral last Thursday. I think it's quite popular but I'd never seen or heard it before.

Remember Me:To the living, I am gone.To the sorrowful, I will never return.To the angry, I was cheated,But to the happy, I am at peace,And to the faithful, I have never left.I cannot be seen, but I can be heard.So as you stand upon a shore, gazing at a beautiful sea - remember me.As you look in awe at a mighty forest and its grand majesty - remember me.As you look upon a flower and admire its simplicity - remember me.Remember me in your heart, your thoughts, your memories of the times we loved,the times we cried, the times we fought, the times we laughed.For if you always think of me, I will never be gone.

Margaret Mead

A wonderful tribute to your brother Gary. My wonderful dad died last April and your poem brought a tear to my eye. He is with me always. x

This level reach of blue is not my sea;Here are sweet waters, pretty in the sun,Whose quiet ripples meet obedientlyA marked and measured line, one after one.This is no sea of mine. that humbly lavesUntroubled sands, spread glittering and warm.I have a need of wilder, crueler waves;They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.

So let a love beat over me again,Loosing its million desperate breakers wide;Sudden and terrible to rise and wane;Roaring the heavens apart; a reckless tideThat casts upon the heart, as it recedes,Splinters and spars and dripping, salty weeds.